Letters from an American - June 29, 2025

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

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Music June 29, 2025. There are four political stories people should know about tonight. First, President Donald Trump's tariff war and weaker consumer spending translated to a contraction of 0.5% in the U.S. economy in the first quarter, even more of a drop than the 0.2% economists expected. The economy Trump inherited from President Joe Biden led the world in productivity. Second, John Hudson and Warren P. Strobel

of the Washington Post reported today that intercepted communications showed that senior Iranian officials said the US attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities caused less damage than they had expected, and that they wondered why the strikes were so restrained. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo also called out that at a press conference

in the Netherlands last Wednesday, Trump said he had given Iran permission to bomb a US air base in Qatar in retaliation for the US strikes on Iran's nuclear weapons program sites. They said, we're going to shoot them. Is one o'clock okay? I said, it's fine, Trump said. And everybody was emptied off the base

so they couldn't get hurt, except for the gunners. Marshall expressed astonishment that this admission has attracted very little attention. He suggested that if it's true, it represents the most shocking dereliction of duty one could imagine for the commander-in-chief. And he wondered how Republicans would have reacted if a Democratic president had said he had let a foreign adversary fire on an American military installation. Third, Jeff Stein of the Washington Post reported today that the Republicans' budget reconciliation

bill makes the biggest cut ever to programs for low-income Americans. Those cuts have made many Republicans skittish about supporting the measure. After Trump attacked him yesterday for not supporting the budget reconciliation bill, Senator Tom Tillis, a Republican of North Carolina, has announced he will not run for reelection next year, indicating his unwillingness to face a primary challenger backed by Trump. This puts the seat in play for a Democratic pickup. In a statement, Tillis said, In Washington over the last few years, it's become increasingly evident that leaders who

are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species. He wrote, I look forward to having the pure freedom to call the balls and strikes as I see fit and representing the great people of North Carolina to the best of my ability. Tonight, Tillis told the Senate, what do I tell 663,000 people in two or three years

when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding's not there anymore, guys? The effect of this bill is to break a promise. Fourth, the Senate parliamentarian has told senators that several of the provisions added to the Republicans' budget reconciliation bill violate the rules for budget reconciliation bills. Those provisions include the ones added to the bill to win the support of Republican

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Today, Trump pushed Republican senators to ignore the Senate parliamentarian, who judges whether proposed measures adhere to Senate rules. Trump posted on social media, an unelected Senate staffer, parliamentarian, should not be allowed to hurt the Republicans' bill. Wants many fantastic things out. No. DJT. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office today said the tax cuts in the

budget reconciliation bill the Republican senators are trying to pass will increase the national debt by $3.3 trillion over the next 10 years, despite the $1.2 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other programs over the same period. Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat of Georgia, called the measure Robin Hood in Reverse, stealing from the poor in order to give to the rich. This massive transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top. This is socialism for the rich.

Trump has demanded the measures passage by July 4th, in part because the Department of Homeland Security has blown through its budget and needs the supplemental funding the bill will provide. That funding adds an astonishing $45 billion for migrant detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to the current budget of $3.4 billion over the next five years and $14.4 billion for transportation and removal, on top of the current annual budget of $750 million.

After Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat of New York, tried to slow the passage of the measure by forcing a reading of the entire 940-page bill in the Senate, senators will begin voting tomorrow on amendments in a procedure known as a Voterama, in which Democratic senators will put Republicans on the record on controversial issues. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.